No One Will Ever Know
by Mitzzi
Summary: Five people saw the hints, but only one ever knew the truth. Because Lily Potter wasn't as perfect as we would like to believe. ONESHOT. Severus Snape is Harry's father.


**My take on the overused "Snape is the father" plot bunny. Tell me how you feel about it!**

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><p>This is how it begins.<p>

A baby is crying. His mother leans over him, whispering assurances in his ear as she rocks him gently back and forth, tears staining her cheeks as well. It was an accident, it wasn't supposed to happen, they were just friends, childhood friends who hadn't spoken in _years._

Lily Potter cradles her son in her arms as she wonders how to break the news to James, _'He's not yours, darling.' _She can't, she decides, and so instead she opens a book of forbidden charms, and sets to work.

No one will ever know.

-X-

Remus Lupin can tell immediately, one sniff of the child's scent is all it takes.

The baby smells like Lily alright, and James too, but he's in James' arms so that's not a surprise. What is a surprise is the other scent that clings to the child's body like Lily's does. The father's scent. It isn't James'.

Something in the wolf reacts to the scent on the baby. _Familiar, _it whispers, _I remember this, _and Remus racks his brain trying to figure out who it could be. He wants to tell James, wants to shake him and shakehimandshakehim, and tell him to _stop smiling at her like that, because she's a lying whore! _But he doesn't, because James loves Lily, and he doesn't think his best friend would believe him over the girl he's been chasing for years.

He's too afraid to chance it, not after finally being accepted for who–what–he is, not with James drifting away towards Sirius and Peter.

He stays silent, and the next time he sees the baby two weeks later the smell has changed, James' scent intermingling with Lily's own, and marking the boy as their child. He shakes off the first scent as an accident (he was so worried something would go wrong that he imagined it did), and ignores the part of the wolf that reminds him that his nose is never wrong. He never tells anyone his suspicions.

No one will ever know.

-X-

Albus Dumbledore knows from the moment he places the child on the doorstep.

He has already dropped the letter into the bundle besides the boy, and is ready to apparate away when it happens. For a split-second, so fast he would have missed it if he had blinked, the boy's form flickers, short hair lengthening and darkening, features shifting almost imperceptibly. Then the change is gone, and the boy looked like he had before, still lying peacefully on the doorstep, blissfully unaware of the chaotic thoughts rushing through Dumbledore's mind.

He can recognize a glamor when he sees one, and this is one of the most complex he has ever seen. Nothing short of a killing curse would cause it to fade, but unfortunately that was the curse the baby had just faced. It's Lily's work of course, her charms work was always impeccable. But why would she…?

He understands with a jolt (_affair)_, and for an instant he wants to remove the glamor and see just whose the child really is, but he shakes away the thought as soon as it comes. Lily must have had a good reason, and it is enough to know that the boy is still The Child of Prophecy.

Dumbledore apparates away and obliviates the moment from his memory the moment he returns to his office.

No one will ever know.

-X-

Severus Snape sees something different on the day of the sorting.

It's the way the boy holds himself, the Potter brat who was guaranteed to be as cocky and arrogant as his father. It's in his awkward posture as he struggles to keep from gaping, and the nervous looks he directs at his clothes as he compares them to clothes of the wealthy pureblood children.

For a second, the child reminds Severus of himself on his first day, and he races through the math in his mind. The boy was born on July 31st, which would have been eight months and 27 days after…

But then he gets a closer look and his wishful thinking is dashed. It's James Potter's _clone. _The same facial structure, the same hair, the same nose and mouth. The only thing different are the eyes. He has her eyes.

Severus feels a surge of hate that even _he _knows is irrational as he watches the boy. The boy that could have been his (_the timing was right_) but wasn't. So he directs all of his anger and hate at the boy in a deadly glare, because this is Potter all over again, when it could have been a Snape. He never thinks about the child's similarities to him again, and if he does, it's only because they both grew up with horrible muggle guardians. He keeps his wishful thinking to himself.

No one will ever know.

-X-

Sirius doesn't realize it until the boy stays at his parent's house over the summer.

At first he takes the boy's looks for granted. He _is _James' son, it's natural that they would look alike. It's only when he is showing his godson pictures of James in his schooldays that he realizes just how alike they look. Too alike.

The same jaw structure, same awkward, slightly short height, same chin and nose, same mouth, same untamable mop of hair, for Merlin's sake, now that the boy's voice has cracked, they even _sound _the same. It's as if someone cloned James and then gave him Lily's eyes, and it doesn't make sense.

Sirius supposes the reason he never noticed before was the difference in personality. Where James would always mess with his hair as he paraded around the castle while basking in his popularity, but the boy seemed to spend hours attempting to make it lie flat as he scurried from place to place, dodging any people that tried to catch his attention. Now that he has noticed though, it's impossible to ignore.

It's almost like someone charmed a random baby into looking like what they imagined a child of James and Lily Potter would be. Someone who knew James very well, wouldn't live to see the boy grow up and was marvelous at charms…

Sirius banishes the thought immediately. Azkaban had messed with his brain. He should just be grateful that the boy had inherited so much of his father's looks. It made Sirius feel like James was still with him. He dismissed the mere idea as another Azkaban moment, and never says a thing.

No one will ever know.

-X-

The Dark Lord Voldemort understood in his dying moments.

He had always been good at connecting the dots, ever since he was a child. His mind was logical in ways that had frightened the other children, and made the orphanage workers think him a prodigy. When he was still a child, he had once fancied himself a _real life Sherlock Holmes. _So as Harry Potter hissed, "Sectumsempra!" In an all-too familiar tone, eyes dark with the same blank anger he saw almost every day, the pieces clicked together and Lily Potter's carefully hidden secret was discovered. By her sworn enemy, no less.

Voldemort had looked Lily Potter in the eyes before killing her, and in that moment gained a brief view into her mind. It wasn't much, only perhaps a second or two of memories whirling past her eyes, and at the time it hadn't mattered to him at all, but it did now. For in her memories he had seen a dark-haired boy with the same green eyes, but very different features.

As Harry Potter declares that Severus Snape was a traitor all along, and had been Dumbledore's man since the Potter's had been threatened, Voldemort realized Severus too had defied him three times. When he was fifteen he had told Lucius he didn't want to be a deatheater, when he was sixteen he burned the Dark Lord's recruitment letter, it was only when he was seventeen that he had joined. Then he had defied the Dark Lord's wishes and gone to Albus Dumbledore to save the Potters.

_Born to those that have thrice defied you_ would still have held true if Harry Potter was not James Potter's son at all, but Severus Snape's instead. As soon as the thought crossed his mind he focused all his magic at studying the Potter boy's body, and for a brief second he could see the silver-sheen of a glamor surrounding him. His eyes widened in shock as another puzzle was solved, and he opened his mouth to speak, only to be cut off as the boy took advantage of his distraction and ended his life with a shouted killing curse. So the secret went with him to the grave.

No one will ever know.

-X-

Harry never understood why Voldemort died laughing, or why his first son's hair was greasy no matter how long he spent washing it.

No one ever knew.

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><p><strong>Poor oblivious Harry, lol.<strong>

**R&R**

**~Mitzzi**


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